Sunday, September 1, 2013

King of Hearts!Definitions belong to the Definers, not to the Defined- Toni Morrison, Beloved

"Human
thinking is a process of cubby-holing your experiences, then drawing upon the
bank of your past experiences, applying the principles of logic you learnt to
the cubby-holed data plus past experiences put together, and making
predictions, i.e. extrapolations, as also interpolations....."

These
lines were written by none else than nacheez in the well-read post

As
we know, ‘Survival of the Fittest’ perpetuates life and hence living beings are
by instinct, comfortable with the ‘predictable’. For, if the environment is
predictable, they can go by the cubby-holed experiences, without coming up
against unexpected danger, and survive merrily! Man therefore looks for
regularity and predictability, tends to over-simplify things, loves thinking in
black and white, and that is the beginning of ‘Prejudice’, which is the bane of
human existence. Sharu Rangnekar wrote about a childhood experience in his
series on Management. On the first day in Grade I, the kid next to him
introduced himself as Abdul, and Sharu steered clear of him because his granny
had once told him that Muslims were unreliable, and as Abdul was a Muslim name,
the classmate was to be avoided. Of course wiser counsel prevailed later, Sharu
supposedly being better educated and cultured than Namo, he, he, he…!

The
baby Sharu or the semi-literate Namo can be pardoned for swearing by old-wives tales,
but the following paragraph trotted out as History by Britannica,
of all publications, is unpardonable and is an act of criminal, casual
cubby-holing:

Because Muhammad Shah Rangeela
sang and danced, loved Music and Wine, he is to be lampooned! This bloody Posterity ki bachchi….! People throng
the Sound and Light show at the Delhi Red Fort, paying Rs. 90/- per head, (Rs.
330/- for foreigners), are regaled with the sounds of wine being poured to the Badshah who drunkenly professes “Dilli doooor ast”, and come out
believing that is the History of the
edifice called Red Fort. Rs. 90/- is enough to sway one’s judgement…It’s a
crying shame the Government perpetuates such crass prejudice and also charges a
fee for the same-$ 4.50, which was $ 5.50 when we began writing this blog: how fast things move in India..!

Mohammad Shah Rangeela
himself willingly or un-wittingly assisted Posterity in her damning act, by voluntarily
adopting the taqhwallus ‘Rangeela’. You’ll appreciate, labels are so significant
in mindless-ness.

Today we highlight the life and times of Mohammad Shah, the colourful
Mughal emperor, whose footprints on the sands of the sub-continent’s culture
are the most enduring and endearing…

Here is the succession of emperors of the Mughal dynasty
alongwith IK’s ABC analysis:

Sr. No.

Emperor

Reign
in AD__to__

Relationship
with Predecessor

Reign
Length A/B/C =Decades 3/2/1

Political
Impact A/B/C

Cultural
Impact A/B/C

1

Babar

1526-1530

X

C

A

A

2

Humayun

1530-1556

Son

A

A

B

3

Akbar

1556-1605

Son

A

A

A

4

Jehangir

1605-1627

Son

B

B

B

5

Shah Jehan

1627-1658

Son

A

B

A

6

Aurangzeb

1658-1707

Son

A

A

A

7

Bahadur Shah I

1707-1712

Son

C

C

C

8

Jahandar Shah

1712-1713

Son

C

C

C

9

Farrukhsiyar

1713-1719

Nephew

C

B

C

10

Rafiúd Darjat

1719

First Paternal
Cousin

C

C

C

11

Shah Jehan II
Rafiúd Daula

1719

Brother

C

C

C

12

Mohammad Shah

1719-1748

First Paternal
Cousin

A

A

A

13

Ahmed Shah
Bahadur

1748-1754

Son

C

B

C

14

Alamgir II

1754-1759

Second Cousin
of Father, but reverting to main line interrupted after Jahandar
40 years back.

C

B

C

15

Shah Alam II

1759-1806

Son

A

A

C

16

Akbar Shah II

1806-1837

Son

A

C

C

17

Bahadur Shah
Zafar

1837-1857

Son

B

A

A

The succession from Babur to Aurangzeb is common knowledge,
though we bet you’ll be flummoxed with the following quiz: हुमायूँअकबरकेबापकाक्याथा ?(**)Seemingly, reign length bears some correlation to cultural
impact. Perhaps the cultural impact

he,he,he ka raaz

aids the longevity as it enervates the
schemers against the throne…. ‘reign in’, he, he, he…? Shah Alam II’s reign was
long, with little cultural impact because he was a Maratha puppet, and the
reign was only in name. sultanat-e-Shah Alam, aa Dilli, ta Palam....सल्तनत -ए -शाहआलम , आदिल्ली,तापालम, they said.

The permanent impact is the Cultural impact, as it reaches
the Social DNA so to say. Soul-stirring I sayyyy… Nacheez is nacheez
because of his mental programming, nothing doing with his ugly exterior…In any
case, in the analysis of IK, only 3
emperors receive 3 A’s, Akbar, Aurangzeb and our protagonist at sr.no. 12! If
you discount Aurangzeb’s achievements as coercive, you’d be justified, and then
you have to call Mohammad Shah Rangeela
the third most successful Mughal Emperor after Akbar and of course the man who started
it all: Babur! The ranking goes on to show the importance the sub-continent
lays on things cultural, highlights the store at least IK stores by these
achievements. Still not convinced? What if you were told that Khayal Gayaki and Urdu Shayari, not to speak of the sensational Qawwali, were born and incubated, they thrived and matured,
during Rangeela’s long reign of 3
decades?!

The impact of Akbar’s Navratnas
led by Mia Tansen wilts before that of Rangeela’sRatnas , for they were Mir Taqi Mir,
Sadarang and Adarang! What Sant Dnyaneshwar and Sant Tukaram are to evolution of Marathi, Mir and Mirza Ghalib are to
Urdu, ahem... You’ll find more on this sphere of Rangeela’s
reign in Pakistani writings than Indian. Our people may parrot she-rs, but are more concerned with reviving
a fossilised Sanskrit, the way Professor John Hammond re-created the dinosaur (Jurassic Park). To negate the beliefs for which Sant Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram were martyred.

Most Mughal historians belonged to the class of the militant
nobility, and hence they either painted (the Shah) as a monster of sloth, or
simply ignored him as a pleasure loving escapist. In reality he was more of a
realist that his accusers, perhaps the first pragmatist in the House of Taimur
since Shahjehan.

Out of the ashes of the Mughal Empire, Muhammad Shah created a
Delhi that was a city of culture. The middle and upper classes were marked with
an easy going attitude with a high value placed on etiquette and courtesy. Even
in the realm of music, the classical dhurpad
was replaced with the easier one, khayal.
The elegant Persian language gave way to Urdu, the language of the commoner,
now adopted by the elite for the first time. The general atmosphere was
liberal, though also licentious. It was the Delhi of Muhammad Shah that Mir
Taqi Mir recalled a generation later with pride and nostalgia, "Dehli jo eik shehr tha alam mien
intikhab..."

It is said that when a messenger brought news to Muhammad Shah
about Nadir's advances in the Frontier and Punjab, he dipped the letter into
his cup of wine, reciting the famous verse from Hafiz: Ein daftar-e-bemaana gharq-e-mae naab oola! (This meaningless
account better be drowned in neat wine)

There is no way we can verify this story, which is inconsistent
with Muhammad Shah's typical behavior on such occasions. Upon hearing the news
of a far-off province taken away he would usually retreat into a garden and
spend a few hours in flower gazing with a gloomy look on his face. But then,
again, consistency is not a virtue to be found in those who represent a
decadent society.

Whatever
may be the case, we know that when Nadir Shah headed towards Delhi he found
Muhammad Shah waiting at Karnal, fully prepared for a battle. The Persians
massacred some twenty thousand soldiers on the Mughal side in a preliminary
skirmish that lasted about two hours. Muhammad Shah stopped the battle and
opened talks. Nizamul Mulk convinced Nadir to return with booty of twenty
million rupees. This remarkable achievement in diplomacy was sabotaged when a
Mughal noble, who had a personal grudge against Nizamul Mulk, informed the
invader that he had made a poor bargain. Nadir now insisted on being taken as a
guest to Delhi.....

Muhammad Shah has been underrated because historians take it for
granted that the sword and the spear are superior to the lyre and the lute.
That is an oversimplification, since the mystery of life can only be understood
if seen in all its colors. If things could be drawn in black and white, then
this world would be an easy place to live in, and perhaps also very boring.

And this is Mir’s Ghazal for which Mirza saheb
would barter his entire deewan:

Munh taka hi kare hai jis-tis ka
hairat hai ye aina kis ka

sham se bujha bujha sa rahta hai
dil hua hai chirag muflis ka

the bure mugabachon k tewar lek
shaikh maikhane se bhala khiska

faiz-e-abr chashm-e-tar se utha
aj daman wasi hai is ka

tab kis ko jo hal-e-'Mir' sune
hal hi aur kuch hai majalis ka

Uma
Ramamurtyis a connoisseur of all that is best in Urdu Shayari, tarannum
included. She was Asstt. Professor
& Director of Research Informatics, Department of Paediatrics, Dan L.Duncan
Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Baylor College of Medicine,
Houston. Her take:

Mir Taqi Mir was born
at Agra in 1723. He spent his early childhood under the care and companionship
of his father, whose constant emphasis on the importance of love and the value
of continence and compassion in life went a long way in moulding the character
of the poet, and this became the chief thematic strand of his poetry.

Mir is one of the
immortals among Urdu poets. He is a perfect artist of theghazal, which makes its
peculiar appeal through compression, suggestion, imagery and musicality. He
builds his poetry on the foundations of his personal experience. His favourite
theme is love - love unfulfilled - and his favourite manner is conversational.
Mir lived at a time when Urdu poetry was yet at a formative stage - its
language was getting reformed and purged of native crudities, and its texture
was being enriched with borrowings from Persian imagery and idiom. Aided by his
aesthetic instincts, Mir struck a fine balance between the old and the new, the
indigenous and the imported elements. Knowing that Urdu is essentially an
Indian language, he retained the best in native Hindi speech and leavened it
with a sprinkling of Persian diction and phraseology, so as to create a poetic
language at once simple, natural and elegant, acceptable alike to the elite and
the common folk. Consequently he has developed a style which has been the envy
of all succeeding poets..

Here,
the Shah should go un-challenged. Shafique has delineated the transition from dhrupad to khayal. The terminology does the rest. Dhrupad stands for Dhruv-pad (Dhruva= Pole star- immutable) and khayal for ‘ínterpretation’. The feet of that Chinese
maiden, which were cribbed and constrained by iron shoes were rendered
unfettered at a stroke, and boyyyyy..…the way she sprinted and continues to do
so…

We
all know the influence Adarang and Sadarang (Niyamat Khan and Feroz Khan)
exercised on Gwalior gayaki through
Hassu Khan and Haddu Khan. A little bird (***) tells us that the
practice of adopting taqhwallus
originated in the times of Rangeela
as innovators were making a break with the establishment, trying unsuccessfully
to hide under the cover of pseudo anonymity.

The question ‘where was the Ulema?’ is beyond our purview, however
interesting it’d be to know…but one darkly suspects, this question has something to do with the whole liberalisation interlude highlighted in purple above...holds the key so to say...remember those seminal words Sherlock Holmes utters in Silver Blaze, on why he suspected insider involvement...'the *** who didn't ****' ? Can't be reproduced here under house rules, but try googling if you forgot...

But it was as if after a Cultural Ice Age the Sun had suddenly come out in all its glory, and people cast away their musty old coats and mufflers, exchanging them for a trendy tan...Here is the Malhar
(Pandit Bhimsen Joshi) which famously commemorates the Badshah:

:

Wellll...that's a most interesting clip, I sayyyy...with due respect to the esteemed audience, it appears as if the great genius has been kidnapped by a group of bandits, and unmindful of his fate, Panditji is busy regaling the abductors...sorry...no flippancy or character assassination on IK....thereby also hangs a tale, better, an unconfirmed legend which was related on the Mumbai channel insync, said to be the only 24x7 channel dedicated to Indian Classical based music. Pt. D.V. Paluskar, or Bapurao, who died young (34) but left an indelible imprint on Indian Music, was an inveterate traveller and therefore exposed to great travel-risk. While traversing Bihar, he was likewise abducted by a dacoit gang, the sargana of which happened to dote on the music of DV's father VD, and just wanted to savour some of VD's classic bhajans in the golden voice of DV! तेहीनो दिवसः गतः ! Gone are the days when even our dacoits were aesthetically inclined...Ya...Bapurao was honourably released and accorded a fitting farewell...

Half of all
great bandishen will contain Sadarang par Rang barasao or
ham to Sadarang tumko chaahat hain, ultimate being ja je apne mandarva in Bhimpalasi:

Pray what is left of Hindustani Classical Vocal, minus Rangeela?

WHICH IS THIS ICONIC QAWWALI?

Unassailable
logic: par baqaul Sahir, Magroor zamana mere liye kyun
waqt apna barbaad kare? All we can plead is: there are two jahans: jahan-e-dil and jahan-e-dimagh: Rangeela was the ruler of Hearts...if you google jahan-e-dimagh for the era, all you'll get is "HTTP Error 404"...

Remember what Blaise Pascal had to say on the issue: The heart has its reasons which Reason knows not...

*******

(*)YT became a paid Britannica subscriber because it happens to be one of the kosher sources so far as son Bittya’s Project-work is concerned. He studies in the country’s leading Law School at Bangalore, and there have been cases where students quoting from Wikipedia have been caned by the VC, he, he, he…

4 comments:

Thanks a ton for the wonderful blog! Love it!I enjoyed reading your article on Muhammad Shah Rangila. Are you sure the Malhar piece ( Pt. Bhimsen Joshi) was composed by Rangeela and not Sadarang? (...sadarangiley ko sukhdayi...towards the end, exactly where one would encounter the 'maqtaa' according to the norms of Urdu nazm).

Is that iconic qawwali 'maula saim chishti' from the superlative movie 'Garm Hawa'?

Kya baat hai! That's the qawwali indeed! Sharp observations, both. Since Sadarangiley was again a taqhwallus of the Badshah, I went along with the belief, but further inquiry substantiates your view. In deference to Posterity I have edited the entry. Thanks....